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I cannot tell you how happy I am that I got on the computer tonight… Absolutely and totally happy. It was a rough day today, which made where my bed seemed like the best place in the world to be. We’ll start with how I came to be on the computer and then maybe we’ll jump back to the rough day part of the story – we’ll see how I feel.

So, I’m laying in bed playing Minecraft and Keirnan and Kenzie have been sent up to bed and didn’t cause that much of hassle when it came to actually sleeping. Kaeidyn however, was still awake and in a most talkative mood and my brother (who is doing amazing, by the way…) and cousin are both here visiting. Carter, my dear sweet Carter, was being a most miserable brat. None of the other kids got donuts before bed and I had decided that Carter wasn’t going to get donuts before bed either, but Uncle and Great-Cousin (though they call him Uncle) had gotten donuts. Carter was most unhappy and cried for close to an hour straight. Over and over again with “I want a donut” and “I didn’t get a donut”.

Then, out of nowhere, the cry changes from a semi-manageable cry to a wail. He’s “ow”-ing away. Lately, he’s really enjoyed half hanging off of surfaces when he sits at them. It’s mostly because as he uses whatever is on the surface in front of him, he manages to push it away from himself. We’ll find him dangling by his belly button from the computer desk because he’s pushed the keyboard all the way back to where he can’t reach it from the chair or at dinner time, dangling from the table because he pushed his plate too far away while eating… Somewhere along all the dangling today, he had managed to get – I’m not sure what you would call it, almost like rug burn but from the wood-like-stuff on the table. It seemed like one from much earlier today, possibly from when The Boyfriend and I weren’t here (more on that later).

Anyways, I cleaned it all up and put some Polysporin on it and talked him through the last of his upsets about the donut, and had convinced him that he needed to take a bath. Out of all of the kids, he definitely needs to be bathed the most. So now, instead of whining about the donuts, he’s now whining because he wants to hurry up and go for a bath. I shut off the games and The Boyfriend decided that he was going to play for awhile. Normally this means, when I come downstairs, I can either sit there and watch him play games or go on the computer – so, go on the computer it was.

And once again, I say unto you, I am most pleased that I did. First, I jump on Facebook (as usual) and immediately find some interesting stuff that had me laughing. Then, I jumped on Twitter. Oh wait, I don’t know if I told you this yet… If you’ll notice, in the sidebar, there is a Twitter feed and if you’ve followed me around the web for quite some time (which I know that I’m really the only one who follows me around on the web… :(), you’ll notice that this isn’t the same as it’s always been. The one there, happens to be the Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous Twitter feed. Some time ago, I had gotten completely fed up with my personal Twitter feed. I was following a lot of people that I had no idea who they were, it was all disorganized and I absolutely despised my previous Twitter handle: @blogaholica – the “a” on the end just always really bugged me…

But recently, I went through my old Twitter account, changed my handle, deleted almost everyone I was following that I didn’t know and had never actually said a word to me and re-organized the whole thing so that I knew what I was working about. I’m pretty sure I alluded to this a couple posts ago. But it was essentially spring cleaning of all my social networks. So, I revamped and came back as @ValerieRayne13 and have been having a great time.

Now that I’m not following a bunch of people who are talking about things that I’m just not interested in (which felt a lot like when The Boyfriend begged me to watch Smosh videos on YouTube last night, which I just barely made it through…), it’s so much nicer going on Twitter and I’m having a ton of fun. By far, my most favorite tweet from myself, so far, goes out to @Cmdr_Hadfield of International Space Station fame (this is one of those things that The Boyfriend got me interested in, that didn’t make me barf a little in my heart). I warn you, not only does it show you just how much of a nerd I really am, but it’s also my lamest and most favorite tweet ever:

@Cmdr_Hadfield I don't mean to sound like a total nerd - but if this were #StarTrek... I'm voting Picard, Riker and Data, who's with me?

After writing this, I’m off to do even more on the computer, before The Boyfriend officially decides it’s bedtime, which I’m sure is coming sooner rather than later, but if you want to read about my rough day, you can always continue reading…

It’s been quite a long while, but I finally posted a video to YouTube… It’s not the best that I’ve ever done, but I was so desperate to post something that I no longer cared if it was perfect or still needed work. So freaking much has changed when it comes to uploading videos on there since I last did it, that the longest part of the whole thing for me was re-acquainting myself with the whole thing. Uploading videos on YouTube is so much cooler now than it was the last time I did it. You’re dying to know what I put up, aren’t you? Okay… I’ll show you!

Like the description of the video says, I haven’t been playing the electric keyboards that long and I am 100% teaching myself, so it’s not the best that it can be but it’s the best that I can do at the moment. One day, I will get a guitar and you won’t hear me complain anymore 😉

In other news, I spent the entire day on Minecraft, even though I had absolutely not intended to. And the second I got off, The Boyfriend got on. But, I am creating something that I keep starting and then re-starting and then re-starting some more and finally for the first time since this journey has started, I’m finally getting to the point where I’m quite excited and happy with what I’ve got. So excited in fact that I’m totally going to invite you along with me on this nerdy journey…

Since I began playing Minecraft, I’ve always been most intrigued by the concept of building a massive city – a metropolis, if you will. For the longest time, I couldn’t figure out what I was going to call it. I played with “ValerieVille“, “MommyLand” and a few others, but nothing was fitting right. Then, I just decided screw the name, I’m just going to start building the thing and then maybe a name will come to me that is suitable.

Construction began and The Boyfriend and I both worked hard trying to figure out redstone and minecart systems so that I could make a functionining train station in the center of my superflat world map and in creative mode. However, once we had completed the train tracks heading to the north, south, east and west, we realized that we had made a few errors and done a few things that needed to be cahnged to get them the way that I really wanted them. And it kept happening. I believe I’ve restarted this at least 3 times now.

But today, being incredibly inspired by all the Minecraft Tutorials I stayed up late watching last night, I jumped back on and began construction on my new mega city and now would like to show you some of the wickedness that is:

Valerieopolis Central Station

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The above images are some of the projects that I’m currently working on in my metropolis. Right in the center of the map is Valerieopolis Central Station, which will have trains leading out to the north, south, east and west and then diagonally (although not perfectly, because you can’t do that in Minecraft) out to the corners. Here’s a basic drawing of the whole concept:

Valerieopolis – Minecraft Xbox 360 Edition

The yellow lines mark what will be the minecart or train system and highways. The circles represent a transfer station, which I’m hoping to figure out how to do eventually. I’ve been watching some tutorials, but it’s taking a lot of time for me to get the hang of all this stuff. So far, the only thing that I’ve gotten to work successfully for me and it took me over 3 hours to figure out is the Fully Functioning Ticket Booth (seen in the slideshow above). This is the tutorial that I watched to figure it out, although as you see, my circuitry is a little different and I’m still having a hard time figuring out exactly how to make it work over and over again for me, instead of just once…

If you’d like to learn more about this map and what I’m hoping to do with it, I’ve started a Google Doc dedicated to ideas for my mega city. I’ve opened up the comments on the document and everything so that you can leave me any suggestions, advice or ideas if you’d really like to jump on this nerdy journey with me 😉 It’ll be an ever-changing, ever-growing, crazy list of things to do…

I’m not sure how much I’ve actually told you about this challenge that I’m doing – and at the moment, I’m the only one doing it but that’s okay, I’ll make it work. So tonight, not only am I going to tell you more about the challenge, but I’m also going to use TODAY’S INSPIRATION to write my own post. I’ve been semi-working on this list for month’s, but have been being an incredibly annoying perfectionist about it, so today, I’m throwing that out…

I’m not going to go into great detail about The Blog Everyday Challenge, because I’ve written about it pretty much everywhere you could imagine and because it’s title is pretty self-explanatory. You blog, every single day, for however long you want to set your goal to blog for is – could be days, weeks, months and even years. Our mission is to support you on that journey!

By joining our official group on Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous, you’ll get support and encouragement to keep you blogging everyday and you’ll also get to meet up with some great adult bloggers. But even if you’re not an adult blogger and still want to join in, we’ve got you covered.

There are even brand new products in the Blog-A-Holic Designs shop so that you can motivate yourself to keep blogging when the going gets tough and even products that you can customize to promote your blog (and the fact that you’re doing this challenge). I’ve been posting about that everywhere too, so I’m not going to say anymore about that…

So, that brings me to my very first goal. I really want to blog every single day for an entire year. So, my plan is to blog daily right here on The Rantings, and while I can’t guarantee what the ratio of adult posts to non-adult posts will be, I’m hoping that it will generally stick around even.

Some of my many other blogging-related/online/technology-type goals this year include:

Add new products to Blog-A-Holic Designs at least once a week, which includes promoting said products on Tumblr blog

Actually start going through my drafts (on all the blogs…) and start finishing and publishing the pieces

Learn how to create an application for devices – just because I want to!

Step up my social networking game… This one requires quite a bit, but a couple of things that I vow to absolutely do this year:

Post every day to my personal Facebook page. It already streams my blog posts there and it shows stuff from the Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous Tumblr blog twice a day, but I’d really like to start putting my own posts up there. Ideally, I’d use Facebook notes to kind of do a daily update about all the stuff I got done online that day… Here’s hoping!

Post every day to Twitter, at least once a day, because I’m really bad for forgetting all about Twitter

Start posting and using my YouTube accounts, both my personal and Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous one. One day, the LBA one will include uploaded videos, but at this point, I just don’t have time to focus on it. It’s something that is in the very early planning phases…

Figure out the one and only system that I’m going to use to curate content (ie. Digg, Delicious, Diigo, Bit.ly), because right now I seem to use a whole bunch of different things and it’s just not working out to my advantage at all…

I know that more will come to me the more I think about it, but I think this is looking like a pretty hefty list already. I guess another goal we can add to this, is to upgrade Lifestyle Bloggers Anonymous. I had planned to do this before the New Year, but life kept getting in the way of that goal, so I don’t want to make any promises… But I really want to allow people video uploading and a video chat room (personally, I really want the chatroom, my members apparently want the video uploading).

So now, what are your blogging goals for 2013? Do you typically set goals for your blog, or is this your first time?

I’ve been thinking about this for a really long time now. I really want some constructive criticism regarding the blog here. I can no longer keep my head when it comes to deciding what I like and what I hate. I know that it no longer feels right and I want to make a change, but I’m having the hardest time just focusing on this blog… Another issue of having so many.

Another issue is that my other blogs generally stick to a certain type of niche. I can keep things more organized and stuff. But this blog, about whatever this blog is about, is an unorganized mess and I’m just not getting the satisfaction that I’d like every time I hit publish. Instead, I think about how much of everything I want to change…

So, I desperately need your feedback. I just want to know what others think about the overall design of the blog, the content available, the navigation structure, the sidebar, etc. I want to know what you think and what you think could be better. Leave your comments with your thoughts and opinions and please… be nice! Also, I’m not trying to make this some money-earning promotion-laden venue, it’s literally just a space for me to write about life in general.

Thanks to everyone who responds. Your opinions are greatly appreciated and valued!

“Aww my man is so sweet! I was craving listening to The Puppini Sisters, but our stereo was set up in the wrong spot, so he moved it first thing this morning for me. Stopped all my complaining dead in it’s tracks ;)”

August 19th, 2012:

“What a crazy day today. Made a wicked dinner, which included Cheddar Havarti Mashed Potatoes (thank you very much Cahlen), then taught Kaeidyn how to shave her legs so that she’d stop plucking all her hair out with tweezers and finally, used a freezie to make Carter feel better after he slammed his little man between the toilet lid and seat…

Is it bedtime yet?!?”

August 18th, 2012:

“They need to make a blow dryer that is completely silent so that I don’t wake anyone up blow drying my long ass hair… It’s the only way to brush it easily after washing it now…”

August 17th, 2012:

“So excited that we’re going shopping today. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited to get groceries in my entire life! Kids have gone out to watch The Lorax and Carter is resting on the bed, so now it’s time for me to power clean my house and see if I can’t get another load of laundry done. It takes so long…”

August 16th, 2012:

“It only took about 8 years, but one of my kids finally had to go in to get stitches. Carter’s now got 2 of them on his head…”

August 15th, 2012:

“Hate that The Boyfriend has to go to work tonight, because I would so much rather just sit and cuddle and watch MI-5. Going to be a long night…”

August 14th, 2012:

“Well, made all my phonecalls that I needed to make today. Gotta get another load of dishes and laundry done and then going out with my Mom for a little bit and then I get to come home and put my feet up, feeling very accomplished! Off I go, hi ho hi ho!”

August 13th, 2012:

“It only took forever and a day, but I am finally back online and super happy to be back!!”

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